Fed’s $412.9 million renewal of Pacific Salmon Initiative cautiously welcomed
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The federal government is spending $412.9 million over five years to renew the Pacific Salmon Strategy in a plan to protect and rebuild wild populations.
Fisheries Minister Joan Thompson said in a statement making the announcement in North Vancouver on Tuesday that the first five years of the initiative have shown what is possible when partners work together to restore habitat, expand hatchery programs, improve management and find new ways to protect vulnerable stocks.
“But the challenges facing wild Pacific salmon are far from over,” Thompson said in the statement.
“Through the Renew (Salmon Strategy), our government is committed to the next chapter of this work – one based on science, guided by Indigenous leadership, and driven by a shared responsibility to protect salmon for future generations.”
Conservation groups in British Columbia say the funding announcement is welcome, but the money must be spent appropriately to “boots on the ground” to assess risks, especially those associated with potentially highly polluting major projects.
Aaron Hill, executive director of the Watershed Watch Salmon Society, said there is concern about many resource projects that could be highly polluting, and that their presence could cause “great harm” to wild salmon if left unchecked.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada is proposing some major changes to those with priority access to wild salmon through its salmon allocation policy – a policy that has been in place since 1999. It comes after a review which included a period of public feedback and consultation. But as Claire Palmer reports, not everyone is happy with some of the suggested changes.
Hill said he is also concerned that the federal government is reducing the operating budget at the Department of Fisheries at a time when potential pollutants could increase.
“It’s really important that they maintain their core programs like stock assessments, so we know how many fish we have and how those populations are doing, and continue to pursue selective fishing programs so that we can have the most sustainable fishery as possible,” Hill said in an interview.
“We are facing record declines in our salmon populations, and so we are now at a point where we have to do everything we can to rebuild those populations so that we have some abundance.”
Two dozen wild Pacific salmon populations have been assessed as endangered, 10 are listed as threatened and nine as of special concern, the federal department said.
Misty McDuffie of the Raincoast Conservation Foundation’s wild salmon program said Tuesday she is hoping the funding can go toward pursuing selective fisheries, thereby avoiding the mixing of wild and hatchery stocks that exposes wild salmon to the risks associated with some types of fishing.
“We’re increasingly understanding that there is mortality, and it depends on the size of the fish, the type of fish, all these kinds of factors,” McDuffie said. “So, there is a cost to the way we have been trying to manage for the last decade or two, a couple of decades really.
“I think where a lot of people, scientists, conservationists and nations are arriving at, is that fishing is not the way to go.”
In BC’s interior, an initiative supported by the Okanagan Nation Alliance has brought sockeye salmon into Okanagan Lake for the first time in nearly a century. As Brady Strachan reports, a new generation of young people are helping restore salmon breeding grounds while reconnecting with their culture.
Salmon initiative was the first Launching in 2021allows collaboration with BC. and Yukon governments, Indigenous peoples, harvesters, scientists, environmental and management groups and West Coast communities.
These partnerships have been central in restoring salmon habitat, fighting illegal fishing and modernizing or building more than 70 hatcheries, the department statement said.
